2014 what after all was heidegger about sheehan

8/10/2019 2014 What After All Was Heidegger About Sheehan

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What, after all, was Heidegger about?

Thomas Sheehan

Stanford UniversityAbstract

The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and thatphenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heideggers interpretationof the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningfulpresence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (dasereignete/geworfene Da-sein).

The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Suchmeaningful presence is theBefragtesof Heideggers question, not theErfragtes. (3)Being and Times goalwas to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4)Ereignis the appropriation of ex-sistence to sustaining the clearing is the later Heideggers reinscription of thrown-openness, der

geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e.,unknowable.

Some preliminaries:(1)I cite Heideggers texts by page and line (the line-number follows the period) in both theGesamtausgabeand the current English translations where available, all of which are listed in thebibliography at the end of this issue of the journal. I cite Sein und Zeitin the Niemeyer 11th edition and inthe ET by Macquarrie-Robinson.(2)SinnandBedeutungare closely related, although Sinn is broader thanBedeutung. Sinn refers either tointelligibility as such or to the fact of something being intelligible, whereas Bedeutungis the specificmeaning that a thing has. Sinnas intelligibility is generally interchangeable withBedeutsamkeitandVerstndlichkeit. Thus I translate Sinnas intelligibility or meaningfulness. Sinnin turn allows for

Bedeutungas the particular meaning of a specific thing.(3) I take intellect in the broad sense of !"#$and in the specific sense of %&'"$understood as discursiveintellect, whether practical or theoretical.(4)Daseinis translated as existence (= existentiel), andExistenzorDa-sein as ex-sistence (=existential). The word man refers to human being, not the male of the species. I render das Seiendeasbeings, things, and entities ex aequo.Man refers to human beings in general, not to the maleof the species.

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2What, after all, was Heidegger about?

Lets step back for a moment way back and ask: What was the final goal of

Heideggers thinking? What was he ultimately after?

Was his goal being, das Sein? Or was it something being-er than being (wesender als

das Sein)?1And might that be being itself, das Sein selbst, sometimes written as Seyn? Or was

it rather, as Heidegger says, Seyn qua Seyn and if so, what might that mean?2Again: Was

Heideggers main topic dieWesung der Wahrheit des Seyns?3or was it die Wahrheit der Wesung

des Seyns?4Or was his topicAnwesung, presencing? Or theLichtung? OrEreignisas just

another name for Being Itself? Or was it, rather,Enteignis?5Or (%)*+,-? or perhaps the .)*/

that lurks within (%)*+,-?6Or was it the ontological difference, as some scholars hold?7Or do all

of these point to the same thing? And how exactly are we to distinguish (ifwe are to distinguish)

one from the other?

There is, in fact, considerable confusion at the heart of the Heideggerian enterprise, and it

may not be the fault of Heidegger scholars. Just to stay with the term Sein: Heidegger himself said

that it remains unclear whatwe are supposed to think under the name being.8Are

Heideggerians, then, subject to the Masters judgment: They say is without knowing what is

actually means?9In any case, he may have known what he meant by the word Sein,but he didnt

always make that clear to the rest of us. So we might want to make our own the plea that the

1GA 73, 2: 1319.23.2GA 73, 2: 997: Seyn ist nicht Seyn. Further on Seyn: ibid., 968.7; 1033.10; 1039.10; 1122.7;etc.; also GA 9: 306 (g)/374 (a): Seyn ist . . . das Ereignis. But cf. loc. cit., Sein qua Ereignis.At GA 81: 76.18, Sein and Seyn are equated, but at GA 76: 49.15-9 they are contrasted.3GA 65: 73.21 = 58.35-6.4GA 65: 78.26 = 63.4-5.5GA 2: 252, note a = 183.44; GA 11: 59, note 33; GA 76: 5.25.6GA 6, 1: 197.9 = 194.1.7 [The difference between being and beings] is the central thought of Heideggerian philosophy:Haugland (2000, I, 47).8GA 40: 34.31-2 = 34.16-7.9GA 15: 277.17-8 = 5.7-8.


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3Eleatic Stranger expresses in theSophist: So first teach us this very thing lest weseemto know

what you told us when in fact we dont (244a8-b1).

In the spirit of a medieval disputatioI propose to state and defend five theses in support ofa paradigm shift in how to read Heidegger. This is an attempt to make sense of Heidegger,

where I mean that phrase as a bit of a pun. I make sense of Heidegger by first of all following him

in his crucial phenomenologicalreinterpretation of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden)as

the meaningful presence of things to man (das Anwesen des Anwesenden). Being is usually and

traditionally understood as the being-ness of things: the "012-of 345!, the entitasof an entity, the

realness of the real. (I use the word realness in what Heidegger calls its traditional sense of

existentiaas objective presence: Vorhandenheit.)

10

However, Heidegger reinterprets all of that,including his own use of the being of beings, in a phenomenological mode such that being-qua-

beingness11comes out not as the ontological realness of the real but as theAnwesen of things,

theirpresenceto man. However, suchAnwesenis not mere objective presence nor simply

presence to our five senses12but rather dasdaseinsmige Anwesen the meaningfulpresence of

things in conjunction with existences understanding ofAnwesen/Sein/meaningfulness. It follows,

therefore, that the being of things is their intelligibility, their (%)*+,-taken broadly. See, for

example, Heideggers equation of Sein and intelligibility when he speaks of the inquiry into the

intelligibility of things [Sinn des Seienden], that is, the inquiry into being [Sein].13Or when he

designates Seinas the intelligibility [Sinn] of phenomena.14Or when he speaks of ontology as

the explicit theoretical question about the intelligibility [Sinn] of things.15

However, I argue that this is only the first step. Heideggers project finally makes sense

only when we realize that his ultimate goal was thesourceof intelligibility, die Herkunft von

10SZ 211. 22-7 = 254.28-33.11GA 66: 316.26-7 = 281.32-3: Anwesung und d.h. Sein und d.h. Seiendheit. Also GA 74: 6.3. 12Cf. SZ 33.30-2 = 57.11-3.13GA 19: 205.13-4 = 141.33-4.14SZ 35.25 = 59.31.15SZ 12.14-5 = 32.23-4. This text has stood through some seventeen editions of SZ (thirteen ofthem during Heideggers lifetime). But GA 2, which claims to be the unvernderter Text,changes it without notice at 16.23 = 11.15 to nach dem Sein des Seienden.


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4Anwesen.16This source he denominated as die ereignete Lichtung,17the appropriated or

thrown-open space for possible intelligibility, which ex-sistence sustains and as such is. This

clearing makes it possible for us to take Socrates asan Athenian, or this tool as suitable forthat

task, and thus to make sense of Socrates and the tool (traditionally, to understand their Sein).

The premise of this essay is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning

to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaningfulness and its source. As Aron

Gurwitsch pointed out years ago, once one has taken the phenomenological turn (the sine qua non

of phenomenological work) there are no other philosophical problems except those of sense,

meaning, and signification.18In short, this essay is about Heideggers phenomenological

reinterpretation of das Sein des Seienden as the significance of things, and his further tracing ofsuch significance back to its source in appropriation.

1 Being (das Sein des Seienden) is the meaningful presence of things to man.

Heidegger puts a twist on the word Seinand finally sets it aside. I no longer like to use

the word Sein he said.19

Sein remains only the provisional term. Consider that Sein was

originally called presence [Anwesen] in the sense of a things

staying-here-before-us-in-disclosedness.20

Staying-here-before-us-in-disclosedness (her-vor-whren in die Unverborgenheit) is

Heideggers term of art for the meaningful presence of something to someone. The phrase

expresses three things: (1) the relativestability and constancyof the meaningful thing (whren);

16GA 6:2, 304.11 = 201.13-5. See GA 2: 53 note a = 37 note ; GA 10: 131.19-20 and .28 =88.27 and .34; and GA 73, 2: 984.2.17GA 71: 211.8.18Gurwitsch (1947, p. 652). Italicized in the original.19GA 15: 20.8-9 = 8.34.20GA 7: 234.13-7 = 78.21-4.


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5(2) the locus of its meaningful appearance, namely the world of human concerns (-vor-); and (3) a

certain movement intoappearance, a things being brought from an undisclosed but potential

intelligibility into an actually operative one (in die Unverborgenheit). This disclosedness of a

thing to understanding is its meaningfulness.

If we overlook the phenomenological paradigm within which Heidegger works, we risk

reducing his texts to some form of nave realism in which Sein can somehow show up without

human existence in the Jurassic Period, for example, some 150,000,000 years ago. It is wrong to

think that Heidegger refused the phenomenological reduction and conducted his early

investigations within the natural attitude. Husserl thought that to be the case and accused

Heidegger of not understanding the phenomenological reduction. To be sure, Heidegger did notunderstand this reduction as leading things back to the transcendental life of consciousness and

its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness.21

Rather, it meant

leading the phenomenological vision backfromthe apprehension of

a thing, whatever may be the character of the apprehension, tothe

understanding of the being [Sein] of the thing: understanding the

thing in terms of the way it is disclosed.22

Note that this being (Sein) to which we lead a thing back is the way the thing is disclosed, that

is, the way in which it is meaningfully present to us and our concerns. Heideggers

phenomenological reduction puts the breaks on (cf. epoch) our natural tendency to overlook

meaning, to look throughit to the entity. The reduction leads us back reflectively and thematically

to where we always already stand: in relation to the thing in terms of its significance to us but

not to us as some transcendental consciousness but rather as living inthe world amongthings asa

21GA 24: 29.12-5 = 21.24-6.22GA 24: 29.15-9 = 21.27-30, my emphasis. Cf. GA 20: 423.4-5 = 306.29-30. Reunderstanding: GA 16: 424.21-2 = 5.15-6: Verstehen, d.h. Entwerfen.


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6body. Heideggers phenomenological reduction is a matter of learning to stand thematically where

we always already stand without noticing it.

Of course neither Husserl nor Heidegger doubt that things remain independent of ourthinking after the reduction. Husserl explicitly said that

we must not overlook the most essential thing of all, namely that even after

the purifying epoch, perception still remains perception of this house,

indeed, of this house with the accepted status of actually existing.23

And for Heidegger Questions like Does the world exist independent of my thinking? aremeaningless.24He added that the thing in nature

shows up in the reducing gaze that focuses on the act of perceiving,

because this perceiving is essentially a perceiving ofthe thing. The

thing belongsto the perceiving as its perceived.25

For Heidegger as well as for Husserl, things are still out there after the reduction. Its just that

as such they are not phenomenologically interesting. The subject matter of a phenomenological

inquiry is things only insofar as we are in some way meaningfully engaged with them. After the

reduction, the only philosophical problems one may properly pursue are those of intelligibility

and meaning: hermeneutical questions.

From the beginning that is, in his phenomenological re-reading of Aristotle in the 1920s

Heidegger interpreted the Greek word "012-not in terms of the objective presence of things but

rather in terms of their presence to human interests and concerns. An "012-is what belongsto a

23Husserl (1968) 243.30-4 = Husserl (1997) 91.12-4.24GA 58: 105.15-6 = 84.5-6. See GA 26: 194.30-1 = 153.28-9.25Husserl (1968) 261.6-9 = Husserl (1997) 113.13-5.


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7person, ones stable possessions or holdings, something that one has a stake in. (Compare John

Lockes to have a property in something.)26As Heidegger later put it:

In Greek "012-means beings not just any beings but beings thatare in a certain way exemplary in their being, namely the beings

that belong to one, ones goods and possessions, house and home

(what one owns, ones wealth), what is at ones disposal. . . .

What makes them exemplary? Our goods and possessions are

invariantly within our reach. Ever at our disposal, they are what lies close

to us, they are right here, presented on a platter, theysteadfastly present

themselves. They are the closest to us, and as steadfastly closest, they are ina special sense at-hand, present before us,present to us.27

Heidegger spelled out this insight by interpreting the presence of things as their

meaningfulness, a theme that runs through all his work, beginning with his courses in the 1920s

and continuing right throughBeing and Timeand up to the end.

[T]o live means to care. What we care for and about, what care

adheres to, is equivalent to what is meaningful.Meaningfulnessis a

categorial determination of the world; the objects of a world

worldly or world-some objects are lived inasmuch as they

embody the character of meaningfulness.28

We do not first have a dumb encounter with things and only later assign them meanings.

It is not the case that objects are at first present as bare realities, asobjects in some sort of natural state and that then in the course of

26Locke (2003, p. 111).27GA 31: 51.11-5 and 51.31-4 = 36.8-11 and .21-5.28GA 61: 90.7-12 = 68.6-10.


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8our experience they receive the garb of a value-character so that

they do not have to run around naked.29

Rather, what is primary and what is immediately given to uswithout some mental detour through a conceptual grasp of the thing

is the meaningful [das Bedeutsame]. When we live in the first-hand

world around us, everything comes at us loaded with meaning, all

over the place and all the time. Everything is within the world [of

meaningfulness]: the world holds forth.30

Which means: If beings are the meaningful (das Bedeutsame), their being is their meaningfulness(Bedeutsamkeit).

All of us, he says, whether a philosophy student, a farmer from the Black Forest, or

someone from a tribe remote from Western civilization, always see what we encounter as fraught

with a meaning.31

One must put aside all theorizing and not drag in what

epistemologists say about the matter. Instead, see the sense in which

factical experience ever and anew has what it experiences in the

character of meaningfulness. Even the most trivial thing is

meaningful (even though it remains trivial nonetheless). Even what

is most lacking in value is meaningful.32

There is nowhere else for a human being to live except in meaning.

29GA 61: 91.22-5 = 69.6-9.30GA 56/57: 72.31-73.5 = 61.19-28: holds forth = es weltet.31GA 56/57: 71:29-31 = 60.23-4: mit einer Bedeutung behaftet.32GA 58: 104.19-24 = 83.19-23.


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9I live factically always as aprisoner of meaningfulness. And every

instance of meaningfulness has its arena of new instances of

meaningfulness. . . . I live in the factical as in an entirely particular

matrixof meaningfulnesses. . . . Whatever is factically experiencedin factical life-contexts stands in this unobtrusive character of

meaningfulness.33

Meaningfulness, as a things relatedness-to-oneself (Mich-Bezogenheit)34need not be

explicit or expressed but can remain quite implicit and unnoticed. The phenomenon of

meaningfulness is not what we originally see.35But that in no way speaks against the reality that

factical life lives in factical relations of meaningfulness.

36

Indeed: The meaning of ex-sistence lies, in factical life, in forms of meaningfulness, whether actually experienced, or

remembered, or awaited.37We do not meet things by taking on board dumb sense data; we

always encounter things assomething or other, where, in traditional language, the as-what and

the how point to the meaningful presence (Anwesen) of the thing.

The as-what and the how of the encounter may be designated as

meaningfulness. This itself is to be interpreted as a category of

Sein.38

Heidegger enunciates this position again in his lectures and writings of 1924. For example,

his course on Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy:

For a long time now, I have been designating the ontological

character of existence as meaningfulness. This ontological character

is the primary one in which we encounter the world.39

33GA 58:104.32-105.1-9 = 83.30-8: bedeutsamkeitsgefangen.34GA 58: 105.12-3 = 84.3.35GA 58: 108.18-9 = 86.10-1.36GA 58: 105.22 = 84.10: in faktischen Bedeutsamkeitsbezgen.37GA 58: 106.12-4 = 84.31-2.38GA 63: 93.7-9 = 71.10-12.


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10

Or in reading through his essay The Concept of Time (1924; the essay meant for publication,

not the Marburg address) one can hardly take a step without stumbling over the word

Bedeutsamkeit.

The lived world is present not as a thing or object, but as

meaningfulness.40

We have now identified the basic character of encountering the

world: meaningfulness.41

We identify meaningfulness as the worlds primary ontological

characteristic.42

. . . the primary character of encountering the world

meaningfulness.43

The following year, on the verge of writingBeing and Time, Heidegger again signaled the

centrality of meaning to human being in his course on logic and truth. Because the very nature of

existence is to make sense of things, existence lives in meanings and can express itself in and as

meanings.44

Heidegger carried into his major work,Being and Time, this same conviction that Seinis

to be understood as the meaningful presence of things. There he designated the structure of world

(Welt) as meaningfulness (Bedeutsamkeit), and he referred to Division Ones analysis of existence

39GA 18: 300.15-8 = 203.27-9.40GA 64: 65.18-9 = 55.15-6.41GA 64: 23.32-3 = 17.25-6.42GA 64: 24.2-3 = 17.30-1.43GA 64:. 25.13-4 = 19.1-2.44GA 21: 151.4-5 = 127.30-2.


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11as the basis of his doctrine of meaning (Bedeutungslehre).45 At the core of that doctrine is the

phenomenology of existence as what Heidegger calls being-in-the-world. But since the essence

of world is meaningfulness, we should interpretIn-der-Welt-seinmore accurately asIn-der-

Bedeutsamkeit-sein: the very structure of ex-sistence is its a prioriengagement-with-

meaningfulness. This is what Heidegger calls our structural familiarity with meaningfulness.46

Absent that engagement, we cease to exist: for us there is no hors-texte, no outside-of-meaning.

When we can no longer relate to the meaningfulness of things, we are dead. Our a priori

engagement with intelligibility as our only way to be entails that we are ineluctably

hermeneutical. We necessarily make some sense of everything we meet (even if only interrogative

sense), and if we cannot make any sense at all of something, we simply cannot meet it.

Meaningfulness or intelligibility, which is always discursive, is confined to the realm of

the human. But how exactly do things become intelligible to us? InBeing and TimeHeidegger

writes: Intelligibility is an existentialeof existence, not a property attaching to things. . . .

Existence alone has intelligibility.47But at the same time: When things within the world are

discovered with the being of existence that is, when they come to be understood we say they

have intelligibility.48That is, we alone have the ability to make sense of things, and we do so by

connecting a possibility of something we encounter with a possibility or need of ourselves: we

take what we meet in terms of it relation to our everyday concerns and goals. When things are

discovered in such a relation with human beings within a given context, they make sense. And

world is the concatenation of relations which brings that about.

45SZ 87.17-8 = 120.3; 334.33-4 = 384.1; and 166.9-10 = 209.26-7. Cf. GA 64: 24.4-7 = 17.34-5.46SZ 87.19-20 = 120.25: Vertrautheit mit der Bedeutsamkeit.47SZ 151.34-5= 193.11-3. On worldhood as an existential: ibid., 64.19-20 = 92.31-2.48SZ 151.22-4 = 192.35-7. The text continues (151.24-5 = 192.37-193.1): But strictly speakingwhat is understood is not the intelligibility but the thing, or alternatively being. The phrasealternatively being refers to when Sein rather than das Seiende is the focus of the question, as inHeideggers Grundfrage.


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12

THE WORLD AS A REALM OF MEANINGFULNESS

possibilities of things

HUMAN CONCERNS AND POSSIBILITIES MEANINGFULNESS

possibilities of things

Heidegger says, As existing, existence isits world.49That is, the world is ourselves writ large as

the matrix of intelligibility: it is our thrown-openness (Geworfenheitasgeworfener Entwurf)

structured as a set of meaning-giving relations. The world consists of lines of referral to our

concerns (represented by the arrows above) that issue in the meaningfulness of things. We are a

hermeneutical field of force, like a magnet that draws things together into unities of sense50

insofar as these things are connected with a possibility of ourselves as the final reference point.

(Heidegger is clear that the process of making sense of things is, in the broadest terms,

social: Existence in itself is essentially being-with.51However, it must be said that his take on

the social inBeing and Timeis generally negative: see his remarks on the crowd-self das

Man-selbst in 27 and 55-58 of that work.)

It is quite clear, then, that by dasSein des SeiendenHeidegger always meansAnwesen, the

meaningful presence of something to someone in terms of that persons concerns and interests.

Whether early or late, Heidegger never understood such Seinas something built into things or

as the objective presence of things in space and time.52 That was what he called existentia, the

ontological substance of things when they are considered apart from human involvement with

them which is to say, before the enactment of a phenomenological reduction. The word SeininHeidegger is always written under phenomenological erasure, that is, it is always understood as

49SZ 364.34-5 = 416.8. See ibid., 64.19-20 = 92.32; 365.38 = 417.11; 380.28-30 = 432.17-8.Also GA 9: 154.18-9 = 120.24-5 and GA 24: 237.8-10 = 166.33-5.50Cf. GA 9: 279.1-7 = 213.10-15.51SZ 120.22-3 = 156.31; see ibid., 121.7-8 = 157.14-5.52GA 9: 276.17-9 = 211.16-8: nicht eine am Stoff vorhandene, seiendeEigenschaft.


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13occurring in correlation with existence. This is not the Husserlian correlation of noema and

noesis, of meant object and constituting consciousness, but rather the togetherness of Anwesen

andDasein, being-as-meaningfulness and existence. Heidegger finds this insight as far back as

Parmenides dictum that being (+!!-,) and the understanding of being (!"+6!) are inseparable (34

-03&: fragment 3). The phenomenological point is repeated by Heidegger in a variety of

formulations, for example:

Being is given only as long as existence is(that is, only as

long as an understanding of being is onticly possible).53

Being is only in the understanding enacted by thoseentities whose being entails an understanding of being.54

[The being-question] asks about being itself insofar as being

enters into the intelligibility [Verstndlichkeit]of

existence.55

Being: that which specifically appears only in man.56

Being needs ex-sistence and certainly does not occur

without this appropriation [of ex-sistence].57

Indeed, in emphasizing that being-as-meaningful-presence can appear only in conjunction with

human being, Heidegger even goes so far as to speak, surprisingly, of

the dependence of being on the understanding of being.58

53SZ 212. 4-5 = 255.10-1.54SZ 183.29-30 = 228.12-4.55SZ 152.11-2 = 193.31-2.56GA 73, 1: 337. Cf. GA 73, 2: 975.24: Sein ist nie ohne Offenbarkeit von Seiendem zuDenken.57GA 65: 254.22-3 = 200.23-4: Seyn . . . Da-sein.


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14

Being is dependent on man.59

Being: only from ex-sistence.60

2 Meaningful presence (Anwesen) is the starting point of, but not the answer to, Heideggers

Grundfrage.

In what sense is Heideggers basic question, in its traditional ontological formulation,

concerned with das Sein selbst, and in what sense is it not? This question has bedeviled Heidegger

scholarship from the beginning; and so we must proceed cautiously, step-by-step. Let us begin,

then, by asking about the general structure of any question and then go on to apply it to the

guiding question (Leitfrage) of metaphysics and the basic question (Grundfrage) of

Heideggers own work.

The three moments of any question are what Heidegger calls theBefragtes, the Gefragtes, and

theErfragtes. These terms stand for, respectively, the object, the optic, and the heuristic

outcome of the inquiry.61

1. TheBefragtesor object of a question refers to the thing under investigation, what

medieval Scholasticism called the obiectum materiale quodor material object.

2. The Gefragtes or optic refers to the formal focus the inquirer adopts in

investigating the material object, and the question that follows from that.62

58SZ212.13-4 = 255.19-20: Abhngigkeit des Seins. . . von Seinsverstndnis.59GA 66: 139.18 = 119.6: Das Seyn is vom Menschen abhngig.60GA 66: 138. 32 = 118.24: Das Seyn nur vom Da-sein. Also GA 65: 263.28-9 = 207.29-30and 264.1-2 = 207.33-4.61SZ 5.13-7 = 25.19-27. Also GA 88: 12: 12.17-20; 20.12-5; and 23.25-6.62Cf. GA 20: 423.8-11 = 306.33-5: die Hinsicht; woraufhin es gesehen wird und gesehenwerden soll.


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15

3. Finally, theErfragtesor outcomeis a formal indication of the answer the inquirer hopes

to obtain by bringing the formal focus to bear on the material object.

With this in mind, we can distinguish metaphysics guiding question orLeitfragefrom

Heideggers meta-metaphysical question or Grundfrage. Metaphysics takes things(whatever is

real, whatever has being)63as its material object; and then asks about the being that makes them

be real.In the traditional reading of Aristotles metaphysical question (and here I focuse on its

ontological moment and prescind from its theological moment) that inquiry unfolds as follows.

1. The material object that metaphysics takes up is things, whatever has being, whatever is

real(345!).

2. The formal focus on those things is then articulated by the proviso: insofar as they have

being and thus are real (75!).

3. Finally, the sought-for outcome of that question is formally indicatedas: whatever it is

that makes things be real. Depending on the metaphysician, the content that fills out the

formal indication will vary: for Plato it will be +89"$, for Aristotle, :!;


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16As these formulations show, the metaphysical question is focused decidedly on things,

specifically from the viewpoint of why, how, and to what extent they are real. Metaphysics begins

with things, then steps beyond them to discover what constitutes them as real at all: their being

or being-ness in a variety of historically changing forms. But finally metaphysics returnstothose things with that news. As Aristotle puts it, metaphysics announces whatever belongs to

things in and of themselves and specifically their first principles and highest causes. 65That is,

the question that metaphysics puts to things is: what is their essence (their esse-ness), in the

broad sense of what lets them be at all. However, the main focus is on the things.

Metaphysics is clearly a matter of onto-logy insofar as the operations of questioning and

answering (-logy) all bear ultimately on beings (onto-).

On the other hand, Heideggers meta-metaphysical inquiry takes up where metaphysics

leaves off. It takes the very being of things (whatever its historical form) and puts thatunder the

microscope as the subject matter. What about this realness itself, this "012-that things have?

This is the question not about >!75!but about "012-7"012-, Sein als Sein, and specifically the

question about what accounts forthe fact that there is Sein at all.66Heideggers question is about

what grounds the inner possibility and necessity of being and its openness to us. 67If we recall

that the word being always and only refers to what makes beingsbe real,68we may state

Heideggers basic question in traditional ontological language. (Later I will express it in a more

appropriate phenomenological form.)

65Metaphysics IV 1, 1003a21-2 and 26-7.66GA 14: 86.24-87.1 = 70.9-10: Sein als Sein, d.h. die Frage, inwiefern es Anwesenheit alssolche geben kann. GA 15: 405.30 = 96.12: Wo und wie west anwesen an? GA 65: 78.22 =62.30: Die Grundfrage: wie west das Seyn? GA 88: 9.7: Wie west das Sein?67GA 16: 66.15-6: worin grndet die innere Mglichkeit und Notwendigkeit der Offenbarkeitdes Seins.68SZ 9.7 = 29.13: Sein ist jeweils das Sein des Seienden.


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18/39

18of these kids. This latter phrase is theformalindicationof the sought-for answer, an indication

that, inasmuch as it is merely formal, does not yet have concrete material content. Eventually the

actual content of that formal indication will turn out to be: Mrs. Smith. Fine but the question is

nonetheless geared entirely to defining the childrenin light of Mrs. Smith.

On the other hand, Heideggers meta-metaphysical question is a bit like starting with Mrs.

Smith herself and considering her not as the mother of the little Smiths (which of course she never

ceases to be, even if we bracket that out for a moment) but rather in terms of herself. Mrs. Smith

herself now becomes the subject matter, and the new inquiry reaches back behind her in the

direction of the heuristicErfragtes, which is: the mother of Mrs. Smith. This phrase is merely

theformal indication whose material content will turn out to be: Mrs. Jones. HeideggersGrundfrageis a bit like Mrs. Smiths night out. It asks about Mrs. Smithseen for herself, apart

from her relation to the children. And therefore the question goes behind Mrs. Smith to her

source, the reason why there is a Mrs. Smith at all. And that will turn out to be Mrs. Jones.

This is analogous to what Heidegger means when he says that his effort is to think Sein

without regard to its being grounded in terms of Seiendes69 to think being in andof itself.

However, the intensifier itself (das Sein selbst) can be misleading. It might make one think

Heidegger is after Seinin its Really Real Form, the way one might look around a cocktail party

(No, not him, nor him. . .) and then say to ones partner, There! Thats the host himself. This

not what Heidegger intends by being itself.Here we run into a major problem that has confused

Heidegger scholarship from the very beginning: the damnable fact that Heidegger uses das Sein

selbst in two very distinct senses. On the one hand it refers to theBefragtesor subject matter of

his question; on the other it is a heuristic device, a merelyformalindicator: being itself is the

heuristic X that stands in for the as-yet-unfound answer to that question.

69GA 14: 5.32-3 = 2.12-4.


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19

In the first case, the phrase being itself refers to what is under investigation, analogous to the

way Mrs. Smith, as theBefragtes, was queriedfor herselfand not as the mother of the little

Smiths.70But in the second case (and with almost inevitable confusion) Heidegger more

frequently uses being itselfnot to name theBefragtesof his questionbut rather as theErfragtes,

and thus as a heuristic stand-in for, a mere formal indication of, whatever it may turn to make the

being of things possible and necessary. In this latter case the philosophical meaning of being

itself is: das Wesen des Seins,71being as regardsits essence, where essence refers to das

Woher des Seins, the whence of being: that from which and through which being comes to

pass at all.72This will turn out to beEreignis, the appropriation of ex-sistence to its thrown-

openness as the clearing.73

To confuse being itself as thesubject matterof Heideggers question with being itself

as aformal indication of the answerto that question is a bit like confusing Mrs. Smith with the

mother of Mrs. Smith who turns out to be Mrs. Jones. You wouldnt want to confuse mother

70Being itself has this sense at, e.g., SZ 152.11 = 193.31: nach ihm [= das Sein] selbst; at GA40: 183.22 = 186.17; etc.71GA 73, 1: 108, my emphasis. GA 14: 141.3-4: Grundfrage nach dem Wesen und der Wahrheitdes Seins.72GA 73, 1: 82.15-6: dasvon woher und wodurch . . . das Sein west. GA 94: 249.5 and .19:[die] Wesung des Seins.73GA 73, 1: 585.27: Ereignis fhrt sich uns zu, in dem es uns dem Da er-eignet. Ibid., 585.19:Er-eignet uns dem Da, italicized.

THE TWO MEANINGS OF DAS SEIN SELBST

As theBefragtesit means: the very being [of a thing] as subject matter of the question.

As theErfragtesit is: aformal indicationof whatever will answer the question.


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20and daughter. That would be a major category mistake . . . and potentially embarrassing.

Being in and of itself is what Heidegger is interrogating (befragen)in an effort to

discover its whence, which will turn out to be the clearing that is opened up by theappropriation of ex-sistence. Appropriation yields the openness, the clearing, within which

meaningful things can perdure.74Being itself does not indicate some higher form of Being, a

Super-Seinthat is different from and superior to the plain ol being-of-beings or beings-in-their-

beingness. Heideggers goal, rather, was to thinkAnwesenback to its source inEreignis (auf das

Ereignis zu . . . gedacht)75as the indefinable it that gives the possibility of meaning at all.

This move is what Heidegger calls the return from meaningful presence to Ereignis.76 And once

one gets there, Heidegger says, there is no more room even for the word Sein.

77

Without some such clarification, confusion is virtually evitable, and we can see that

confusion at work when Heidegger defines his central topic as das Sein selbst in dessen Wesen

being itself in its own essence.78This German phrase brings together bothsenses of being

itself. The first three words refer to theBefragtesof Heideggers question, whereas the last three

words refer to theErfragtes.

74GA 12: 247.2-4 = 127.18-9.75GA 14: 45.29-30 = 37.5-6. See GA 12: 249.30-1 = 129.38-40: Dagegen lt das Seinhinsichtlich seiner Wesensherkunft aus dem Ereignis denken.76GA 14:55.8 = 45.32: Rckgang vom Anwesen zum Ereignen.77GA 15: 365.17-8 = 60.9-10: ist sogar fr den Namen Sein kein Raum mehr.78GA 40: 183.22 = 186.17.


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21

At this point one might well mutterLasciate ogni speranza voi chentrate qui.However,

to switch from Dante to Dobson, there is a way out of this Humpty-Dumpty-ism of When I use a

word, it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.79 In his later work,

especially after 1960, Heidegger expressed himself more clearly: what the formally indicative

term das Sein selbstactually refers to is die Lichtung,the clearing, which he designated as the

Urphnomen.80The clearing is the always already opened-up space that makes the being of

things (phenomenologically: the intelligibility of things) possible and necessary. The heuristic X

now has some actual, real content; and what previously was onlyformallyindicated is now

materially spelled out and properly named.

Hence this essays solution to the Humpty-Dumpty-ism of das Sein selbst: From now on I

will strictly avoid the term being itself. Instead, I will call Heideggers subject matter

meaningfulness and the sought-for outcome of his inquiry the clearing.

79Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6, 66.21-4.80GA 14: 81.13 = 65.30-1.

Das Sein selbst in dessen Wesen

In ontological terms:

Befragtes= das Sein selbst: The very being [of things] is under investigation.

Erfragtes= in dessen Wesen: We seek the essenceor whenceof such being.

In more appropriate phenomenological terms:

Befragtes= das Anwesen selbst: Meaningfulness itself is under investigation.

Erfragtes = in dessen Woher: We seek what makes meaningfulness possible at all.


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22The question now, of course, is: What exactly is this phenomenon calledEreignisthat

lets meaningful presence come about? The key to understandingEreignisis to realize that it is the

later Heideggers reinscription of what he had earlier called Geworfenheit, thrownness, and

more fully der geworfene Entwurf, thrown-openness. Therefore, prior to getting toEreignis, abrief run-through of what Heidegger was trying to do inBeing and Time.

3 Being and Times goal was the openness (Lichtung) that allows for meaning at all.

In the Big Picture, the goal ofBeing and Timewas to identify and explain the openness

that makes it possible to take something asthis-or-that or as a suitable meansto achieve an end,and thus to make sense of it (traditionally, to understand its Sein).81This open space went by a

series of cognate and mutually reinforcing terms throughout Heideggers career, among which are

Da, Welt,Erschlossenheit,Zeit, Temporalitt,Zeit-Raum, Offene,Weite, Gegend, andZwischen.

In his later work, however, all these terms tended to gather around Lichtung,82the intrinsically

concealed clearing.83

Why does meaning require a space of openness? Answer: because our experience of

meaning is inevitably discursive. If we stay within Heideggers phenomenological framework, the

argument comes out as follows:

1. To think or act dis-cursively entails running back and forth (dis-currere) between a

thing and its possible meanings, or between a tool and the task-to-be-done, as one checks

out whether the thing actually does have this meaning, or whether the tool is in fact

suitable for the task.84

81GA 9: 131.21-2 = 103.33-5: Verstndnis des Seins (Seinsverfassung: Was- und Wie-sein) desSeienden.82E.g., GA 9: 326.15-6 = 248.37-7: Die Lichtung des Seins, und nur sie, ist Welt.83GA 87: 99.27-9: Welt and its Welten are intrinsically hidden.84SZ 34:1-4 = 57.25-8: rekurriert, where Heidegger follows Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, 58,3, ad 1 and Summa contra gentes, I, 57, 2.


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232.

When I take something asthis-or-that or as suitable fora task, I (rightly or wrongly)

understand the current meaning of that thing for me (ontologically: das jeweilige Sein des

Seienden).

3.

The as or as suitable for indicates a possible relationbetween a thing and its meaning,or a tool and the task; and such a relation requires a space between the relata. Hence I

canthink and act discursively onlyby metaphorically traversing the open space85

between the tool and the task or the thing and its meaning. That space is the clearing.

4. But the clearing must be always already operativein order for there to be an as or an

as-suitable-for at all.

5. Hence, the ever-operative, always-thrown-open clearing is what allows for all cases of

meaningfulness (ontologically: all instances of das Sein). The thrown-open clearing is thusthe thing itself of all Heideggers work.

InBeing and Timethis clearing is called theDaofDa-sein. This wordDashould never be

translated as here or there but always as openness or the open in the sense of that which

is thrown-open. Existence is thrown, brought into its openness but notof its own accord.86So

tooDa-seinshould not be translated as being-there, being-here, or being t/here. Heidegger

insists that theDaofDa-seinis not a locative adverb at all (here, there, or where): Da !

ibi und ubi.87

Da-sein is a key word of my thinking and thus the occasion for

major misunderstandings. For me, Da-sein does not mean the

same as Here I am! but rather if I might express it in a perhaps

impossible French tre le-l. And the le-lis precisely !?%)*+,-:

disclosedness openness.88

85GA 15: 380.6 = 68.43: eine offene Weite zu durchgehen. Cf. GA 14: 81.35 and 84.3-4 =66.19 and 68.9; GA 7: 19.12 = 18.32.86SZ 284.11-2 = 329.35-6.87GA 71: 211.4 = 180.30. Heidegger (2011), 9.27-8: Da nicht demonstrativ (wie dort)ontisch, sondern: ekstatisch dimensioniert.88Heidegger (1964) 182.27-184.3. See Heidegger (1987) 156.33-5 = 120.20-1.


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24Thus theDaofDasein

should designate the openness where beings can be present for

human beings, and human beings for themselves.89

The human being occurs in such a way that he or she is the Da,

that is, the clearing of being.90

[Exsistence] isitself the clearing.91

The clearing: theDa is itself existence.

92

Existence must be understood as being-the-clearing [die-Lichtung-

sein].Dais specifically the word for the open expanse.93

To be the clearing to be cast into the clearing as the open = to-be-the-open.94

The same goes forErschlossenheit, which translates (-%)*+,-: dis-closedness, i.e.,

openness. For Heidegger there are three interrelated levels of disclosedness/openness, which we

may designate as (%)*+,--1, (%)*+,--2, and (%)*+,--3. In reverse order:

(%)*+,--3 refers to correctness, the agreement of a propositional

statement with the state of affairs to which it refers: what is

traditionally called the correspondence of intellect and thing. But if

the intellect is to correspond to it, that thing or state of affairs must

89Heidegger (1987) 156.35-157.1 = 120.22-4. See GA 27: 136.13-5 and 137.7-8.90GA 9: 325.20-1 = 248.11-2. See Heidegger (1987) 351.14-7 = 281.31-282.1; GA 14: 35.23 =27.33; GA 49: 60.25-7; GA 66: 129.5 = 109.7-8; and GA 6:2: 323.13-5 = 218.3-5 (!).91SZ 133.5 = 171.22.92Heidegger (2011) 9.23. See also GA 3: 229.10-1 = 160.32; and GA 70: 125.12.93GA 15: 380.11-2 = 69.4-5. Also SZ 147.2-3 = 187.13-4 and GA 66: 100.30 = 84.11.94GA 69: 101.12: Die Lichtung sein in sie als Offenes sich loswerfen = dasDa-sein.


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25itself be already dis-closed or opened up as knowable which

means that correspondence depends on

(%)*+,--2, the prior, pre-propositional openness or intelligibility ofthings, which Heidegger initially called ontic truth. Finally, at the

root of the previous two, and making them possible, there is

(%)*+,--1, the thrown-open clearing (openness-prime) that ex-

sistence itself is and that makes possible meaningfulness at all. This

is what Heidegger initially called ontological truth. This ur-

openness is the clearing in both the early and later Heidegger.

95

The same goes forZeitand Temporalitt. Heideggers use of the term time, especially

in his earlier writings, can be misleading. But in his later writings he was clear: this word is only

ein Vorname, apreliminary and halting attempt to articulate (%)*+,--1,the ur-disclosedness/

openedness that is the clearing.96Zeit andTemporalittare early stand-in terms fordie Lichtung.

See, for example, Sein und seiner Lichtung(Zeit),97Sein west in der Lichtung der Zeit,98

Lichtung der Sichvergerben (Zeit) erbringt Anwesen (Sein).99See also Heideggers

interpretation of time and being asLichtung und Anwesenheit.100Therefore, in translating and

interpretingZeitand its cognates we would do well to avoid anything that sounds like time and

temporality, lest we think Heidegger is still talking about past-present-future. (The customary

representations of time . . . will not get at what is sought after in the [basic] question.)101Instead,

he says, InBeing and TimeI have attempted to develop a new concept of time and temporality in

95On (%)*+,--1: GA 14: 82.9 = 66.26; 85.32-3 = 69.21-2. On (%)*+,--1 and -2: GA 3: 13.15-7 =8.40-9.1. On (%)*+,--3: SZ 214.24-36 = 257.24-5.96GA 9: 376.11 = 285.26-7 and 159 note a = 123 note a; GA 14: 36.11-2 = 28.20-1; GA 49: 57.2-3; GA 65: 74.10-1 = 59.20-3; and GA 74: 9.6.97GA 66: 145.25 = 124.6. Cf. SZ 408.7 = 460.20-1.98GA 74: 9.3.99GA 11: 151.37-8 = xx.32-3. Cf. ibid., 151.21-2 = xx.25-7.100GA 14: 90.1-2 = 73.1-2. Here Heidegger inverts being and time to time and being, the titleprojected for SZ I.3.101GA 73, 1: 90.10-12 = 14.37-9. See GA 20: 442.12-4 = 320.3-5.


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26the sense of ecstatic openness102 in other words, the open space or clearing that makes

discursive sense possible.

IfDa, Welt,Erschlossenheit,Zeit, and Temporalittare early names forLichtung, we mayask whatsustains this clearing, i.e., what holdsit open. Heideggers answer, early and late, is ex-

sistence. To exist, he says, might be more adequately translated as sustaining a realm of

openness.103More specifically, inBeing and Timewhat sustains that openness is our structure

as projected-open, der geworfene Entwurf thrown-openness, with emphasis on the thrownness

as our being a priori drawn out and opened up as possibility. The thrown-openness of ex-sistence

is not due to a spontaneous initiative on the part of the human will. Rather, it consists in our being

always alreadypulled open(or asBeing and Timeputs it:stretchedopen), structurally made-to-stand-out as possibility (ex +sistere),104drawn out ahead of ourselves so that we sustain theDa

or Welt that we ourselves existentially are.105InBeing and Timethe final name for the thrown-

openness that sustains the clearing isZeitlichkeit again, not to be interpreted as temporality

with its connotations of past-present-future but rather as the always-already-operative unfolding

(Zeitigung) of the clearing qua ecstatic openness.106

AlthoughBeing and Timewas to remain a torso, it had already sketched out a response to

Heideggers basic question, one that did not change in its fundamentals, even in the later work.

What allows for intelligibility and meaning at all? Answer: the thrown-open clearing that lets us

make sense of the things we encounter (i.e., understand their being), whether practically or

theoretically.

102GA 16: 708.9-11 = 45.16-8.103Heidegger (1987) 274.1 = 218.15.104GA 94: 281.27.105Pulled or drawn out: GA 8: 11.6-11 = 9.13-17 and GA 6:2: 360.12-4 = 249.35-6.Stretched: SZ 390.37 = 442.33. SeeEnneadsIII 7, 11.41: 9,@13-1,$ABC$, and Augustine,Confessions, XI 26.33: distentio animi.106Zeitigungor Sich-zeitigung should never be translated as temporalization (which meansnothing) but always in terms of unfolding or emergence. Zeitigung als Sich-zeitigen ist Sich-entfalten, aufgehen und so erscheinen, Heidegger (1987) 203.7-8 = 158.10-1.


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274 Ereignis the appropriation of existence to sustaining the clearing is the later

Heideggers reinscription of thrown-openness.

The key to understandingEreignisis to realize that it is the later Heideggers reinscriptionof what he had earlier called Geworfenheit, thrownness and more fully der geworfene Entwurf,

thrown-openness. (Why thrown-openness? Answer: WhatDa-seinis thrown into is its own

Existenz, but intoExistenz as the open clearing.)107

We saw that Heideggers basic question is: What makes the meaningful presence of things

possible at all? If the early Heideggers response was our a priori thrown-openness as the

clearing, the later Heideggers answer was the same: What makes meaningfulness possible is ourstructural appropriation to holding open the space for discursive intelligibility. Thrownness and

appropriation are identical, simply earlier and later names for the same existential structure. We

can see that identity from the way the later Heidegger frequently equates the two by placing them

in apposition to each another.

die Er-eignung, das Geworfenwerden

being appropriated, becoming thrown108

geworfener . . . d.h. er-eignet

thrown . . . , that is, appropriated109

Das Dasein ist geworfen, ereignet

Existence is thrown, [i.e.,] appropriated.110

107SZ 276.16-7 =321.11 with SZ 133.5 = 171.22. 108GA 65: 34.9 = 29.7.109GA 65: 239.5 = 188.25.110GA 65: 304.8 = 240.16. See ibid., 252.23-5 = 199.3-4. Also GA 9: 377, note d = 286, note d:Geworfenheit und Ereignis.


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28We see it again in the equivalence of Heideggers earlier and later formulations for what existence

is called to take over:

die bernahme der Geworfenheittaking over ones thrownness111

die ber-nahme der Er-eignung

taking over ones being appropriated112

How to translateEreignis? In ordinary German the word means event. However, in

establishing his own technical meaning ofEreignis, Heidegger repeatedly refused its translationas event (hence even as event of appropriation). He consistently argued against understanding

Ereignisas any kind of happening.

What the termEreignisnames can no longer be represented by way of the

current meaning of the word, for in that meaningEreignisis understood as

an event and a happening . . . .113

Here the term Ereignisno longer means what we would otherwise call a

happening, an occurrence.114

Ereignis. . . cannot be represented either as an event or a happening. 115

Nevertheless let us ask: Is appropriation an event? Is it a unique moment in a temporal

continuum, with a before and an after? Does it happen at certain distinguishable times, so that we

111SZ 325.37 = 373.14-5.112GA 65: 322.7-8 = 254.36-7. GA 94: 337.7-8: ein Zurckwachsen in das Tragende derGeworfenheit.113GA 14: 25.33-26.1 = 20.29-33: Vorkommnis, Geschehnis.114GA 11: 45.19-20 = 36.18-9. Geschehnis, Vorkommnis. The German text adds a note: [nor as]eine Begebenheit, an event.115GA 12: 247.9-10 = 127.25-7: Vorkommnis, Geschehen.


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29can say Now it is in effect, whereas before it was not? No,Ereignisis much more than an event:

it is afact, that which is always already done (factum). Appropriation is that which is already

operative in our case, even before we were.116What is more, it is thefact, the Urfaktum or

thing itself, without which there are no other facts, events, or happenings in the human realm. 117This Fact (and for a moment we capitalize it to show its capital role in human being) both

determines and is coterminous with ex-sistence, without being supervenient to or separable from

it. But what is the Fact that the word appropriation is trying to express? It is simply that,

without any discernible reason, we are thrown open in such a way that we are always already

brought ad proprium (ad +propri-ated), brought into our proper as the clearing. Ap-propri-

ation means that we have always already been released into our ownness, our essence: the

clearing.

118

And that proper ownness Without this primordial and ever on-going Fact, nothinghuman happens; and yet in itself it is not a happening but the presupposition of all happenings: 34

D


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30The relatedness is the clearing itself, and mans essence is this same relatedness. 122The clearing

and ex-sistence are not two separate factors, but a unique and undividable unitary

phenomenon123that found its earliest expression in the termIn-der-Welt-sein, mans a priori

status as sustaining the clearing-for-meaningful-presence. Moreover, this oscillating sameness isprecisely what Heidegger means by the turn in itsprimary and proper sense, which he called

die im Ereignis wesende Kehre, the turn operative in appropriation.124 That is: this turn the

Gegenschwungas the man/clearing oscillation is always-already operative (west) due to

appropriation. Heidegger sometimes expresses this oscillation asthe clearings need of ex-

sistence to hold the clearing open, and as ex-sistences belonging to the clearing in the sense of

holding it open.125This reci-proci-ty (back-and-forth-ness) of need and belonging is what

Heidegger means byEreignis, the ap-propri-ating that earlier I called being.

126

In identifying the man/clearing oscillation as the primary and proper sense of the Kehre,

I am contrasting it with Heideggers 1930s shift from a transcendental to a seinsgeschichtlich

approach. That shift he called notthe turn but simply a change in approach to his question (die

Wendung im Denken).127Many scholars still think, incorrectly, that this shift in approach is the

primary and proper sense of theKehre. However, Heidegger speaks of the oscillation-operative-

in-appropriation as the hidden ground of all other subordinate turns,128including that shift of

approach in the 1930s. That is why Heidegger could tell William J. Richardson in his letter of

April, 1962:

First and foremost theKehreis not a process that took place in my

thinking and questioning. [Thatprocess is the shift of approach in

gebraucht, gehre . . . in einen Brauch, der ihn beansprucht.122GA 73, 1: 790.5-8: Der Bezug ist jedoch nicht zwischen das Seyn und den Menscheneingespannt. . . . Der Bezug ist das Seyn selbst, und das Menschenwesen ist der selbe Bezug.123SZ 53.12 = 78.22: ein einheitliche Phnomen.124GA 65: 407.8 =322.33.125GA 65: 251.24-5 = 198.14: Dieser Gegenschwung des Brauchens und Zugehrensmacht dasSeyn als Ereignis aus. GA 94: 448.21-2: Der andere Gott [= die Wahrheit des Seins: GA 65:35.2 and 308.25] braucht uns; and ibid., 449.10-4.126GA 81: 209.8.127GA 11: 150.19 = xviii.27. One of the clearest statements on this is GA 74: 8.5-28.128GA 65: 407.8-11 = 322.334.


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31the 1930s.] . . . The turn is operative within theissue itself. It is not

something I came up with, and it does not pertain just to my

thinking.129

In other words, the structural fact of the man/clearing oscillation or rather, Heideggers insight

into that fact is what brought about the shift of approach in the 1930s, and not vice versa. This

oscillation is the primary and proper meaning of die Kehre.

In thrown-openness or appropriation, what gets thrown open or appropriated (geworfen,

ereignet) is human being itself.130 However, we must be careful more careful than Heidegger

himself was in articulating that point, lest we end up hypostasizing Appropriationor BeingItself into an ontological Super-Something, with a life of its own and agency to boot, that does the

appropriating and throwing.131There is no reason why ex-sistence is thrown-open or

appropriated: it is ohne Warum. I suggest we drop all talk of man being thrown or appropriated

by. . . , if only to purge, once and for all, the crypto-metaphysics that has colonized Heidegger

scholarship in recent years (with quite a bit of help, one must admit, from Heidegger itself). Such

fatal hypostasization and quasi-personalization of Being Itself, whether by the Master or his

disciples, turns Heideggers work into a parody of itself. Think of the pathos of Being is still

waiting for the time when It itself will become thought-provoking to the human being.132Or the

silliness of Being as suchis not yet awake in such a way that it might catch sight of us from out

of its awakened essence.133Or Heideggers hyperbolic claim about Beings ownership of us as

if we were its property (Eigentum).134 This is less dormitat Homerusand more inebriatus est

Noe. With texts like these its best to take Virgils advice to Dante:Non ragionam di lor ma

quarda e passa.

129GA 11: 149.29-150.1 = xviii.1-8, my emphasis in the ET.130GA 12: 249.1-2 = 129.9. GA 94: 448.31: das Er-eignis des Daseins, wodurch dieses danngeeignet wird. Also GA 14: 28.18-9 = 23.15-7.131GA 9: 442.21 = 334.21: zu einem phantastischen Weltwesen hypostasieren. Cf. GA 73, 2:975.22-3: als Etwas fr sich Vorhandenes.132GA 9: 322.30-1 = 246.15-6.133GA 10: 80.29-30 = 54.11-3.134GA 65: 263.14 = 207.16.


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325 Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden.

What to make of Heideggers claim that being itself withdraws itself from us, hides itself,

and even refuses itself to us?135Such claims are among the most blatant of Heideggers frequentand unhelpful hypostasizations and personifications of Being. Let us ask: What is it that hides?

And what does the hiding consist in?

Once we realize that, as a phenomenologist, Heidegger interprets Sein,in all of its

incarnations, as the intelligibility of things, we see that it cannot be Sein/meaningfulness that is

intrinsically concealed. Rather, what is hidden is that which makes being/meaningfulness possible

at all: our thrown appropriation to sustaining the clearing. But how and why does Heideggerargue that this thrown-open clearing is intrinsically hidden?

First of all, as regards rhetoric: Let us avoid the quasi-personalization of the clearing that

insinuates itself through the use of thefaux reflexive: The clearing hides itself. In this case verb

forms likesich entziehenandsich verbergenare to be read as The clearing iswithdrawn, is

hidden instead of The clearing ups and hides itself. (Compare etwas zeigt sich: something

shows up.)Secondly, as regards substance: The clearing is intrinsically hidden precisely because

it is the presupposition of all human activity, including all questioning and knowing, all searching

for reasons. Consequently we will never get an answer to the question What possibilizes that

which possibilizes everything? As Heidegger puts it: There is nothing else to which

appropriation could be led back or in terms of which it could be explained.136Appropriation is

what originally makes everythingpossible, analogous to the Good in Plato.137It is that behind

which we cannot go without contradicting ourselves.

Trying to explain the presupposition of all explaining is a fools errand.138

It traps us in apetitio principii, a begging of the question in this case, not realizing that we are already wrapped

135Passim. E.g., GA 66: 203. 10-1 = 178.28-9; GA 94: 428.8: etc.136GA 12: 247.12-3 = 127.28-30.137GA 22: 106. 32 = 87.32. SeeEnneadsVI.9.11.2-3 and VI.7.40.51-2 (Henry-Schwyzer).138By explaining I mean 3H!-=32-!','!I1F+,!, knowing the -=32-of something:Posterior


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33up from the outset in what we are attempting to find.139Heidegger does say that thepetere

principium, the reaching out to the supporting ground [= the clearing], is the only move that

philosophy ever makes.140But what he means is that true philosophical thinking actively

presupposesthis supporting ground by electing to leave it in its unknowability (its intrinsichiddenness) rather than attempting to get behind it to an alleged cause. The unknowability of the

why and wherefore of the appropriated/thrown-open clearing is what Heidegger finally means by

facticity, which he designates as the mystery located at the heart of existence: das Geheimnis

des Daseins,141das vergessene Geheimnis des Daseins.142This is what he has in mind when he

says: Der Entzug aber ist des Da-seins143(the withdrawal goes with the very nature of ex-

sistence). The best Heidegger can do in discussing this mystery is to say Es gibt Sein. The es

refers to appropriated thrown-openness, and that is as far back as we can go in discovering whatmakes possible (gibt) the finite intelligibility (Sein) that we are ineluctably bound up with. As

Heidegger wrote to William J. Richardson:

If instead of time we substitute the intrinsically concealed clearing [that is

proper to meaningful] presence, then being is determined from out of the

thrown-open domain of time. . . . The intrinsically concealed clearing (Zeit)

brings forth presence (Sein).144

Because it is intrinsically hidden unable to be known in its why-and-wherefore the

appropriation of ex-sistence to itsproprium (namely, to sustain the clearing) has been overlooked

and forgotten in all of metaphysics. It is certainly not the being of things (Sein) that

metaphysics has forgotten. Philosophers over the centuries have written reams on such being,

beginning with AristotlesMetaphysics. What Heidegger means by his ill-named shorthand term

AnalyticsI 2, 71b10-1. See rerum cognoscere causas: Virgil, GeorgicsII, 490, repeated in thetondo of Rafaels School of Athens.139Prior AnalyticsII 16, 64b28.140GA 9: 244.32-3 = 187.28-9.141GA 9: 197.26 = 151.9.142GA 9: 195.23 = 149.28. Cf. GA 10: 126.27-9 = 85.17-8.143GA 65: 293.9 = 231.8-9.144GA 11: 151.21-2 and .27-8 = xxi.25-7 and 32-3. Thrown-open domain: Entwurfbereich. Cf.GA 9: 201.31 = 154.13.


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34the forgottenness of being (Seinsvergessenheit) is the overlooking of what makes being

possible.145

In similar fashion the problem of being-hiding-itself is dissolved once we remember thatthe phrase being itself does not refer to some Higher Form of Being (higher than the being of

beings) but is simply the formal indication of the whence of being, i.e., that which allows for

the being of beings at all.146This helps us understand some of the later Heideggers typical but

less than translucent sentences. For example, he writes that being (Seyn, often translated by the

barbaric beyng)

refuses itself and thus hides itself as refusal . . . for the sake of the gifting[Schenkung].147

A periphrastic translation, minus the false personalization, might say: Insofar as the appropriated

clearing (beyng) is intrinsically hidden, we cannot know why and to what end it is the giving

or origin of all meaningfulness. Or similarly:

What if being itself [das Seyn selbst]were self-withdrawing and occurred

as the denying [of itself to us]? Would such refusal be something empty

and void? Or would it be the highest form of gifting?148

Translation: Although appropriation-to-sustaining-the-clearing is unexplainable (intrinsically

hidden), it is not nothing. Rather, it is the primordial source the gifting of the possibility of

meaningfulness. Or again:

145Re ill-named shorthand: Compare, for example, Heideggers condensation of the question ofthe intelligibility of being into the question of being in the titles to the first four sections of SZ.At SZ 26.38 = 49.17-18 he reduces the question of the intelligibility of being to the questionWas heit Sein? Note the ambivalence at ibid. 26.7-10 = 49.24-7.146On the forgottenness of the essenceof being: GA 79: 53.27-8 = 51.6-7: Vergessenheit seines[= des Seins] Wesens.147GA 66: 200.32-4 = 176.35-7.148GA 65: 246.17-9 = 194.11-2. See ibid., 293.16-7 = 231.15-6; and GA 10: 81.15-7 = 54.29-31.


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35Being itself [das Sein selbst] withdraws itself. But as this withdrawal, being

is precisely the relatedness that claims the essence of man as the abode of

beings arrival.149

That is: The appropriated clearing, as the intrinsically hidden source of meaningfulness, cannot be

comprehended in and for itself. But as intrinsically hidden, it claims ex-sistence as the place

where meaningfulness occurs. Or in a passage that may not need paraphrasing:

That which is to be thought turns away from us. It withdraws from

us. But how can we have the least knowledge of something that is

withdrawn from the outset? How can we even give it a name?Whatever withdraws refuses to arrive. But withdrawing is not

nothing. Withdrawal is appropriation. [Entzug ist Ereignis.]In fact,

what withdraws may even concern and claim us more essentially

that all the meaningful things that strike and touch us.150

Or finally, in a simple phrase: die Verweigerung als Schenkung.151That is: appropriation, as

intrinsically unknowable in its why and wherefore, is what gives us the gift of the meaningful

presence of things.

* * *

Reading Heidegger as a phenomenologist whose subject matter was meaningfulness

obviates the nave realist interpretations of being that have recently proliferated in Heidegger-

scholarship, and it opens up his texts to a new and fruitful dialogue with other philosophical

discourses. Furthermore, reading his final goal as thesourceof meaningfulness frees his workfrom the false hypostasization of Being Itself that plagues the current scholarship, and it brings

new clarity to the relation of the early and later Heidegger.

149GA 6:2: 332.25-8 = 225.22-4. See ibid., 360.12-4 = 249.35-6. 150GA 8: 10.26-32 = 8:33-9.5, my emphasis.151GA 65: 241.17-8 = 190.18-9. See GA 66: 200.31-4 = 176.34-7.


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36

Of course thefinalfinal goal of Heideggers thinking was not theoretical-philosophical

but existentiel-personal. Heideggers philosophy, as one might hope all philosophy would be, was

not just about knowing something, getting the answer to a question, no matter how profound thatquestion might be. In the spirit of what we might call Greek existential wisdom, his philosophy

was also and above all a protreptic to self-transformation.152On his first day of teaching after the

Great War he urged his students, in the words of the German preacher Angelus Silesius (1624-

77):Mensch, werde wesentlich!Become what you essentially are! (which he coupled with

Jesus challenge, Accept it if you can!).153Eight years later, inBeing and Time he echoed the

same exhortation, this time in the words of Pindar: Werde, was du bist!Become what you

already are!

154

Again, in mid-career (1938) he told his students:

Over and over we must insist: In the question of truth as posed here, what

is at stake is not only an alteration in the traditional conception of truth. .

. . Rather, what is at stake is a transformation in mans being.155

Finally, therefore, the theoretical path and the protreptic path become one and the same in

Heideggers work. His single-minded task remained that of explicating existence so as to find its

ground, which turns out to be no ground at all but a radical thrown-openness that he urges us to

embrace and live out of. We may say, therefore, that throughout the half-century of his career he

did nothing but pursue the command inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: '!GJ,1+-K3&!,

Know yourself which he glossed as The question of ex-sistence is clarified only by

existing.156

END

152GA 94: 5.17: Der Mensch soll zu sich selbst kommen! See ibid., 16.12-3.153Literally: Become essential! GA 56/57: 5.34-5 = 5.14-5; Matthew 19:12.154SZ 145.41 = 186.4. Pindar, Pythian Odes, II, 72 (Farnell, 1932, III, 56). 155GA 45: 214.15-8 = 181.5-8. See GA 94: 259.20-1: Die Umwlzung zum Da-sein . . . meineinziger Wille.156RespectivelyProtagoras342b3 and SZ 12.30-1 = 33.8-9.


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37References

1 The Gesamtausgabe volumes cited, along with their English translations

These follow the rubrics inA Heidegger Bibliography: The Gesamtausgabe Texts and their

Current Translations, which appears in Continental Philosophy Review, 47, 2 (2014).

2 Other texts

Aquinas, Thomas. S. Thomae de Aquino, Omnia opera.

http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html

Aristotle. Aristotelis opera. Ed. Academia Regia Borussica (Immanuel Bekker et al.), 4 vols.

Augustine. The Confessionsof Augustine, an electronic edition.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/conf/

Carroll, Lewis (Dobson, Charles). 1920; originally 1871. Through the Looking Glass. Cincinnati:

Johnson and Hardin.

Damascius. 1966 (1986-91). Dubitationes et solutiones de primis principiis, in Platonis

Parmenidem. Ed. Carolus Aemelius Ruelle, Paris, 1889; reprinted, Amsterdam: Adolf M.

Hakkert, 2 vols. (In another edition: 1986-1991. De Principiis in Trait des premirs

principles. Ed. Leendert Gerrit Westerink, tr. Joseph Combs, 3 vols., Paris: Les Belles

Lettres.)

Farnell, Lewis Richard. 1932. The Works of Pindar. London: Macmillan, 3 volumes.

Gurwitsch, Aron. 1947. Le Cogito dans la Philosophie de Husserl: Gaston Berger. Philosophy

and Phenomenological Research, VII, 4, 649-54.


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Haugland, John. 2000. Truth and finitude: Heideggers transcendental existentialism. In

Heidegger, Authenticity and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, 2

volumes. ed. Mark Wrathall and Jeff Malpas. Cambridge: MIT Press, 4, 43-77.

Heidegger, Martin. 1964. Lettre Monsieur Beaufret (23 novembre 1945). In Martin Heidegger,

Lettre sur lhumanisme, ed. and trans. Roger Munier, new, revised edition. Paris: Aubier,

ditions Montaigne, 180-184.

Heidegger, Martin. 1987.Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle Gesprche Briefe, ed. Merdard

Boss. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. ETZollikon Seminars: Protocols Conversations Letters. 2001. Ed. Medard Boss, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay.

Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 2011. Die Seinsfrage in Sein und Zeit.Heidegger Studies27, 9-12.

Husserl, Edmund. 1968.Phnomenologische Psychologie(Husserliana IX), ed. Walter Biemel.

The Hague: Nijhoff.

Husserl. 1997.Husserl: Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the

Confrontation with Heidegger (1927-1931). Thomas Sheehan, and Richard Palmer, eds.

and trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Locke, John. 2003. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian

Shipiro. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Plato. 1902. Platonis opera. Ed. John Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon, 5 vols.

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2014 what after all was heidegger about sheehan

Documents